SLO Compliance

SLO compliance refers to the extent to which a service meets or adheres to its defined Service Level Objectives (SLOs). An SLO is a specific, measurable target for a service's performance or reliability, such as uptime, response time, or error rate, agreed upon to ensure a certain level of quality for users. Compliance, in this context, means that the service is performing within the acceptable range or threshold set by the SLO over a specified period of time.

For example, if an SLO states that a website should be available 99.9% of the time in a month, SLO compliance would be achieved if the actual availability meets or exceeds that 99.9% target. If it falls below, the service is considered non-compliant, which might trigger actions like alerts, investigations, or even penalties if tied to a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with customers.

In practice, SLO compliance is tracked using Service Level Indicators (SLIs)—quantitative metrics like latency or success rate—that are monitored over time. It’s a key concept in fields like Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) to balance service reliability with operational goals.